Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Evidence on Fukushima Effects

There are a number of conclusions that can be drawn from an analysis of the information available about Fukushima.

First, data about the
scale of atmospheric and ocean emissions have not been revealed and most
studies modeling releases may be based on false inputs.

Second, evidence exists
that the Japanese government has not adequately evacuated citizens nor
adequately identified and decontaminated hotspots outside of the evacuation
zone.

Third, fallout in the
ocean is being trivialized as non-relevant (even for ocean life) despite the high probability that people will consume contaminated sea life and the possibility that
radiation will enter the water cycle and fall in precipitation .

Fourth, cesium is
absorbed by plants and will enter the food cycle in bioaccumulate in insects,
people and animals.

Fifth, evidence is
starting to accumulate about bio-accumulation and mutations in animal life
around the plant. I'm going to look at some of that literature here:

The first study was conducted by researchers from Nippon
Veterinary and Life Science University (NVLU) on the bioaccumulation of cesium
by Japanese macques:

The
concentrations ranged between 10,000 and 25,000 becquerels per kilogram
immediately after the nuclear crisis began to unfurl the month before. The
readings fell to 500-1,500 becquerels per kg in June, but rose again to more than 2,000 becquerels per kg from last
winter to spring. (Kimura
and Hatano, 2012)

The researchers believe
that consumption of leaf buds explain the seasonal variation because leaf buds
will have high levels of bio-accumulation. Research on rodent populations in
Belarus after the Chernobyl accident found that maximum levels of radiocesium
from this disaster peaked one to two years after deposition while
concentrations of strontium-90 increased up to the tenth year. Americium241, a
transuranic element, was not detected for five years but then increased up to
the tenth year with an expected increase in the future (Ryabokon, Smolich,
Kudryashov, and Goncharova, 2005).

This
research suggests that were the Fukushima disaster over, the macques would soon
experience a decrease in the reported levels of radiocesium; however, Fukushima
continues to emit radiation daily into the atmosphere and ocean. The NHK documentary Fukushima Daiichi Radiation: March to
Recovery; Voices From 3/11 published August 12, 2012According to
Tepco’s estimates in June 2012, the reactors 1 through 3 continue to emit 10
million becquerels per hour of radioactive cesium (Sugimoto, 1012). No doubt this is an understatement given
allegations that Tepco and the Japanese government have conspired to hide the
extent of radioactive fallout. Former Minister for Internal Affairs Haraguchi Kazuhiro
has alleged that radiation monitoring station data was actually three
decimal places greater than the numbers released to the public. If this is
true, it constitutes a “national crime”, in Nishio’s words (cited in Penney,
2011).

The second study examined Fukushima radiation’s biological
impacts on the pale grass blue butterfly. The researchers collected 144 adult
samples from ten different locations in May of 2011 and again in September of
2011 (Hiyama et al, 2012). A 12.4 percent abnormality rate was found in field
caught butterflies from May 2011. Abnormalities in forewing size were detected
in field caught butterflies from higher radiation areas. The researchers found
that the male forewing size was negatively correlated with ground radiation
levels at the collections sites. Results also included an increase in mutations
in leg appendages and antennae correlated positively with collections sites
with higher levels of radiation. The researchers bred the butterflies and found
substantially increased mutation rates among offspring generations, an
approximate tripling of the overall abnormality rate by generation two. The
researchers compared mutations in their lab-bread butterflies with mutations in
238 butterflies collected from the field in September and early October 2011.
The butterflies collected in the fall of 2011 exhibited 28.1 percent mutations,
double the rate observed in the field-collected butterflies from May 2011 with
a mutation rate of 60.2 percent for the first generation offspring of the fall
field caught butterflies. The mutation rates across generations are alarming
because, as the lead researcher Joji Otaki from the University of Ryukus,
Okinawa told BBC on August 13, 2012: “It had been believed that insects are
very resistant to radiation. . . In that sense, our results were unexpected” (Crompton,
2012).

The study was immediately criticized for focusing on a
butterfly known to migrate but the critical finding remains uncontested, the
rate of mutations across these generations after exposure to radiation compared
to controls, even given uncertainty about the exact dose of exposure. The mutations and the genome instability found in
the butterfly study echo findings of a study of voles published in 2006 by Ryabokonand
Goncharova, “Transgenerational Accumulation of Radiation in Small
Mammals Chronically Exposed to Chernobyl Fallout.” The researchers followed 22
generations of voles over ten years. A main finding of “long term development
of biological damage under low dose rate irradiation” was “permanently elevated
levels of chromosome aberrations and an increasing frequency of embryonic
lethality” (p. 167). The researchers
concluded that radiation exposure to parental generations led to an
“accumulated pool of germline mutations and/or epigenetic changes, which
resulted in the observed, persistently elevated levels of chromosome
aberrations in somatic cells and an increase in embryonic losses in later
generations” (p. 175). The researchers found that cesium moved through the
biosphere from the soil and into plants that were consumed by animals. The time
period varied by the level of deposition.

The Japanese government has announced that it plans to
study genetic effects from the Fukushima disaster (“Government to Study, 2012).
However, detection of genetic effects happens too late to prevent damage. It
will merely convince future generations how toxic radiation is to human
biology, presuming the findings are published. Research led by Toshikazu Suzuki of Japan’s
National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) looked at data that modeled
the hourly thyroid dose of over a thousand children under sixteen years old in
Fukushima Prefecture from March 24 to March 30. The study estimated that the
children’s thyroid dose at between 12 and 42 millisieverts from Iodine-131
alone (Oiwa, 2012). What genetic and epigenetic damage has occurred with
these children and how much more will occur as they bio-accumulate radiation
from their environment?

REFERENCES

Crumpton, Nick Severe
Abnormalities found in Fukushima Butterflies the BBC (2012, August 13).

3 comments:

The authors of the butterfly study reproduced the mutations in the lab. That's why the study was accepted for publication, I'm sure. The essence of scientific analysis is reproducibility.

I wonder what would have happened if the entire Chernobyl radioactivity disaster was dumped into the ocean... whether it would be as bad as the Pacific is now. I doubt it. What we have to look for is the Pacific being a pump for radionuclides being emitted into the atmosphere... for decades? centuries? millenia?

About Me

I am a Professor at a large public university. I study political economy and biopolitics (the politics of life). My interests are diverse but are broadly concerned with economic, social and environmental justice. I have published 5 books: Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy and Ecological Sustainability: The Threat of Financial and Energy Complexes in the Twenty-First Century (2016); Fukusima and the Privatization of Risk (2013); Constructing Autism (2005); Governmentality, Biopower and Everyday Life (2008/2011); Governing Childhood (2010).
I also participated in an edited collection on Fukushima: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization (2014).